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We’re doing a contest this week and giving away a gift certificate to RevZilla. RevZilla is a leading online motorcycle superstore. They record and feature video reviews of their top products and have a very large selection of helmets, jackets, and pants for street, touring, and offroad bikers. I have been looking specifically at the Shoei Helmets. I figured it might be a smart idea to pick one up and I have finally gotten around to shopping the idea around a bit.

Anyway, if you are interested in the contest here is how it is going to work. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment on this post about your first ride. When the contest ends on August 3rd, one week from now I will pick a comment at random. Please make sure you are using a valid email address with your comment as I will be contacting you via email to get more information so that I can get you your gift card. That is all there is to it, share a story with others, get a chance at a gift card to a killer online store. Take a moment to enter, then head on over to their site and check it out.

4 Comments

My 1st ride: June 1970, Zweibrucken, Germany. My boyfriend told me “If you can kick it, you can ride it.” “IT” was a 1969 650cc Bonneville Triumph. The 1st time (day) I kicked for hours, until it finally roared to life. He wasn’t around and I took him at his word. I climbed on (it was fairly tall compared to my 14 year old height.)

I managed to scrape the kickstand up off the pavement, I dropped the bike into 1st gear (after making sure the clutch was securely pulled all the way in), I revved the engine then slowly let the clutch out. OPPS … the revving didn’t stop I kept the throttle twisted a TAD too high! The bike practically flew out from under me, but I held on like I was riding a high spirited bronco bareback. Me and the bike flew across the yard and into a thick hedge, which (thank you Jesus) stopped us both before we got OUT of the hedge! It was scary as hell. The engine kept running: the rear wheel kept turning (uselessly) until I was able to gather my wits and shut the bike down. I was tangled in the hedge for HOURS, and the bike was tangled until we were able to get a reciprocating saw and cut away the old growth branches that held the bike securely up right and deep into the old hedgerow. I was laughed at for years after that, but he NEVER told me I couldn’t ride the bike. Once the bike was out of the hedge, he told me to crank it up and ride it, this time with some supervision. I did MUCH better the second time around, and after that he couldn’t keep me off the bike. He rotated back stateside a few months later. Because he got busted during his time in Germany for Hashish possession, he lost all his rank and couldn’t afford to ship the bike back. I convinced him to leave the bike with me. He later sent for both ME and the bike. We were married a year after the incident, and I finally got a drivers license and rode the bike legal for the first time. I rode that bike all over Germany back in the 70’s. Had the best time of my life. Wish I could do it again.

My 1st ride alone was in 1963 when I was 8, on a Cushman scooter. My brother fixed stuff for people and someone brought a scooter over for him to fix. After he fixed it we would ride it and he told me if I could start it I could ride it. After about an hour of jumping on the starter it fired up!!! I pushed up the stand and jumped on it, I was to small to set on the seat so I stood up in the center. I rode it up and down the road in front of our house as my brother wasn’t home and my sister was watching me, she came out to stop me and I would aim at her with the scooter. After about a half hour I passed my folks coming home, they weren’t very happy but that started a life time of bike riding. With lots of memory’s, later I found an old bicycle and put a rototiller engine on it. When I was older I rode from Michigan to Idaho to watch Evil fall in his canyon, and have been to Mexico and California, and have been on many other rides.

My first real ride was in March (I came to the sport late in life). A buddy of mine led us up CO72 thru Bear Creek Canyon, from Morrison CO to Evergreen CO. Very twisty and scenic. Later that night I was looking at a motorcycle map of Colorado that rated the different routes by difficulty- red for experienced riders, orange for intermediate, etc. Seems the route we traveled earlier in the day was for experienced riders only- ‘steep grades and sharp technical turns’. So apparently, I had no business on that road, which I nevertheless negotiated up n back without incident. It was a blast.

My first ride was somewhere around 1965. My mother’s cousin stopped by our house on a 1963 FLH. My dad says I was glued to the glass doors looking onto the driveway. He asked me if I wanted to go for a ride with him on it. Reportedly, I responded, “You don’t know anything about motorcycles.” He put me on the bike and away we went. after 30 minutes, we returned to the house and I begun to try to figure out what we could trade for it – our travel trailer, mom’s station wagon, etc.

To this day, my dad firmly believes my attraction to Harley Road Kings is due to by initial attraction to a 1963 FLH when I was two years old. I cannot argue with that logic.